Development and sale of Alzheimer’s drug, aducanumab, ceased

The pharmaceutical company, Biogen, announced this week that it will stop developing and marketing the Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab (commercially known as Aduhelm).

Aducanumab is designed to target and clear amyloid, one of the hallmark proteins that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, at an early stage of the disease. This is similar to the mode of action of newer Alzheimer’s drugs, lecanemab – also made by Biogen – and Eli Lilly’s donanemab.

Aducanumab was made available to people living with Alzheimer’s in the US in June 2021, but was not approved for use in Europe and the UK after the EU drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), declined to licence it. The EMA ruled that results from clinical studies were conflicting, and did not show overall that the drug was effective at treating people with early Alzheimer’s disease.  In addition, concerns were raised that the studies did not show that the medicine was sufficiently safe.

Biogen says it will now “reprioritise resources allocated to aducanumab to advance lecanemab and to develop new treatments.” Biogen is a co-developer of lecanemab, which was granted full approval in the United States last year. A regulatory decision on lecanemab for use in the UK is likely to be made in the first half of 2024.